Teaching through content area texts: Exploring how preservice teachers curate and use anti-bias and culturally sustaining collections

Preservice teachers' (PSTs) purposes for selecting texts hold important implications for K–12 learners, yet PSTs often engage in self-censorship that limits the integration of diverse and equity-oriented materials. Using anti-bias pedagogies and the Intercultural Development Continuum (IDC) as guiding frameworks, this mixed-methods study examines how PSTs' descriptions of content-area text selections reveal their future approaches to anti-bias contexts. Sixty-one junior-level PSTs in elementary education courses curated and described text sets aligned with social studies, science, or math standards. Open-ended responses were analyzed using an a priori rubric developed from NAEYC anti-bias guidelines. Quantitative analyses included descriptive statistics, repeated-measures ANOVA, frequency analyses, and linear regression models. Findings show that PSTs overwhelmingly favored texts that address identity dimensions while rarely selecting books that reflect diversity, justice, or action, often because of anticipated stakeholder critique. Implications highlight both PSTs’ current capacities and the developmental support needed to foster more robust anti-bias text selection.